Gpsr Stories

[+The Navigatorz]

There must be a lot of interesting stories out there about either leaving your gps behind, or losing it altogther. I'll start with a one of my stories...

 

After an exhausting climb up a hillside in Spokane, WA, I was near the cache location but found the satellite signals were weak and my gps was having difficulty locking on. After waiting several minutes, I then decided to set my gps on a rock and let it do its thing while I looked around. Well, I soon found the cache and didn't need need the gps after all. I opened the cache container, signed the log, rehid the cache, and headed back to the car. (Did you catch that? GPS still sitting on rock!!). It wasn't until I was back in the car, happy that I made that strenuous climb, and looked in my pocket for gps and the next cache location. Dagnabit!!! I really seriously felt like abandoning it and going to Target and purchasing another. I could imagine the puzzled look on the next geocachers face when he sees a gps near the cache, but no one around. Needless to say, I made the dreadful hike again to retrieve the gps. Oh well...I got good exercise.

 

Let's hear your stories. Anyone travel many miles to geocache only to find you left gps at home? Anyone drop theirs overboard out of a boat into a lake? or run over it with your vehicle by accident?

[+seneca]

I convinced the family to go Geocaching with me on the condition of an obligatory stop at McD’s on the way home. Had my digital camera, my phone, and my treasured E-Trex Vista all in the same small gadget bag which I hung over the back of my seat in the restaurant in a way that I thought would guarantee I wouldn’t forget it. Nothing is guaranteed. In the car, and about two blocks away, the realization hits, and within half a second I terrify the family with a simultaneous “ohhhhh nooooo” scream, and treacherous u-turn (over a raised median, of course). Stopped right in front of the door at Ronald’s place and jump out with the engine still running and run inside. There’s the bag still hanging there. Boy, was I was relieved (although I think I had already relieved myself before finding it!) Whew....... that was close.

[WH]

Boy, was I was relieved (although I think I had already relieved myself before finding it!)

Well first you say it....then you do it.

[+rcav8r]

I lost my first GPS way before I knew about geocaching. It was during the deer hunt. I had scouted the area before, so I could find "my" spot in the dark before opening time. Took a few readings along the way, then tucked the GPS in my hunting coat pocket to navigate some brambles near the stand. Didn't need it again until I left. THATS when I discovered it was missing. Appearently the strap had been hanging out of the pocket, and it got snatched by the bushes and I didn't even notice.

 

I got a lot of other hunters in the area mad (it was public area, and I had no idea that SO MANY people knew about this spot) trying to find that GPS. Never did. As far as I know, its still out, buried under forest litter. It was a Eagle 12, IIRC.

 

I thought my 2nd GPS had gotten stolen out of my car, but found it later in a kitchen cabinet when my wife had put it there without telling me, then forgotten about.

 

Still have that and my Garmin 196.

 

John

[+Freaky Tiki Five]

Was out caching the other evening, and had to load the little one before I could get in...so, I set my GPSr on top of the vehicle thinking this would be a great spot to keep it. Obviously I had my duh for breakfast that morning. As I was driving to the next cache site (I had a vague idea of where to go) I realized I didn't have the GPSr. I was certain that it had fallen off the roof and I was down a couple of hundred bucks. Not so says the Garmin, but you do win a toaster! I don't think it moved an inch...talk about relieved!

[+thomascanty]

I left my Vista sitting on the roof of the car once, too, but it didn't stay there. As I drove away I heard what sounded like a pine cone hitting the roof. I looked in my rear view mirror to see the GPSr go rolling down the rear window, bounce off the trunk and go flying into the highway where it bounced a few times. Fortunately it didn't break and it still works as good as always, but it has a few scratches, even though it was inside a leather case when it took it's tumble.

[+AJ of Dunbar]

well i have a magellan blazer 12 around here somewhere.... since we moved i havent been able to find it..... I bought a sporttrak map

 

I cant say i have left my GPS on my car but i have done something similiar. While camping i brought my 1/10 scale 4wd rc monster truck (gas powered) and i left a couple screw drivers, fueld bottle, and a $100 temperature gun on my rear bumper of my truck. Well i drove off with all of it on there. I reliezed i did that half way down the road. Mom and dad had seen the fuel bottle and got it. I went out on bike and found the battery (crushed by a car) from the temp gun on the road. and feared the worst for my temp gun. I found it on the road but fortunantly it had only a couple scratches. I found one screw driver, but couldnt find the other

 

aj

[+Polgara]

I once set my GPS down on the tail light of my jeep so I could lift the dog into the back. I then shut the door and proceeded to drive 15 mins down the expressway then another 5 mins on side roads, then all the way up the driveway to the house...got the dog out of the jeep, and realized my etrex was still sitting on the tail light.

[+ohgr]

Left my e-trex legend on the roof of the car, drove about 2 blocks, remembered it, walked the same 1/4 mile strip of road 5 times, couldn't find it. Then about six hours later the guy who had found it returned it to me.

 

The guy who returned it told me he would have brought it back sooner only it was on when he found it, and he couldn't figure out how or if it would turn off, then he figured out you had to hold down the button for a couple seconds, and when he turned it back on, he saw the little owner info screen. He wouldn't take the reward.

 

But now I know how fast he drives (84mph) and the location of the place he said he had breakfast while he tried to figure out how to turn it off.

 

I am now a little more carefull where I set it down.

 

Ohgr

[+briansnat]

I put mine on the hood of the car to get a good sat lock while we got ready for our hike. We put our packs on and hit the trail. About a mile into the hike, I reached for the GPS and it wasn't there! Ahhhh! I dropped my pack and ran down the rocky trail as fast as I could and there was the GPS sitting on the hood.

 

Used to be that the most expensive thing I'd bring along on a hike was my pack. Small chance of losing that. Now, I have a $350 GPS, $300 digital camera and $300 PDA to keep track of . Lost the camera while snowshoeing a few weeks ago. It was in the pocket of my down vest. I snapped photos during the trip and when we driving home, I reached for the camera and it wasn't there. I turned the car around and remembered that I had fallen when trying to get my snowshoes off at the trailhead. Made my way to the trailhead, and there was the laynard for the camera sticking out of the snow. Whew!

 

With all the roof stories here it makes me feel better to know I'm not the only person who has done that. I now make sure I put my GPS on the hood, rather than the roof, so at least I'll see it before driving off. But here is one roof story. I was headed out for a day of trout fishing and balanced my flyrod (worth several hundred dollars) across the bars of my ski rack while I packed the car, hit the highway and several miles later stopped for gas. As I was paying the attendant he said, "are you sure you want this thing up here like this". It was my flyrod still up there. I have no idea how it stayed on, as I was probably doing 60 mph on the highway.

 

One more roof story. We have a vacation cabin at a lake in northern NJ. I was headed up there and my dad mentioned that he left his good dress shoes there and would like me to bring them home. I guess I placed them on the roof as I packed the car. Anyway, I drove home, then to my parents house and my father asked me if I remembered the shoes. I went out to the car to get them and they weren't in the trunk. Then I looked up and both were firmly wedged under the ski rack! Saved!

 

Some other things I've left on the roof.....a case of CD's. Case cracked but CD's were OK. My beloved and well broken in baseball glove. Never found that one. My Braun electric razor (needed an new screen and it's been fine and my cat in its carrier....remembered just after I backed out of the driveway (another whew!).

Edited March 14, 2004 by briansnat

[+Team Lyons]

Lost my V in the snow while placing a cache in the woods. It took me almost two hoursd to find it. Thank God the V beeps when it loses signal. If it wasn't for that I woulda died on the mountain becauce I was not gonna leave without it. I have a Lanyard now

[+The Navigatorz]

Interesting and funny stories. Since there are some "non-gps" stories here also, I might as well tell about the time (about 40 years ago), when my Dad was going to work and before leaving home, picked up our little Chihuahua to pet it. Well, he put it on top of the car so he could take care of something inside, and forgot about it and proceeded to drive to work. (Don't worry, this has a good ending). Fortunately he was in town on 25 mph roads, not near a hiway. So as he was driving to work he noticed people in cars were honking their horn at him and waving to him. He thought they were just being friendly and he waved back. It wasn't until he got to a traffic light when a motorist pulled up with a panic look and asked him to roll his window down. When he did they said "There's a dog on your roof!!!" He got out and there was little Chica just sitting up there wagging her tail as if she was having a good time. Needless to say he turned around and brought her home.

[+rickrich]

I can't add any quality to these stories, but I can add quantity.

 

1st) 10/06/03. At NOT 2 EZ I set a Visor Handspring plus Magellan GPS Companion (original cost for pair about $350) down on the concrete walkway while the kids and I searched for the final micro (at night). We found the micro and logged in as FTF. Then went home, sans GPSr. I didn't realize it until 9:30 the next morning. Went back, but it was gone. Never recovered.

 

2nd) 02/21/04. At Maximum Exposure III I set a *second* Visor Handspring plus Magellan GPS Companion (cost for this pair was only about $75) down on the bridge railing while I searched for the micro. Found and logged the micro, then went home. At home, I realized what I had done. Luckily, I knew someone who lived just a block away. So at 7:50AM on a Saturday morning, I called over there and woke up his son. I quickly explained what geocaching was and where to find my GPSr. The son got dressed and retrieved my GPSr before a dog-walker found it.

 

3rd) 03/04/04. At Smile! I set a Garmin Geko 201 (cost $115) down inside a baseball dugout. Found final micro and logged FTF. Then went home. Later that day, I was driving to a job interview when I realized where the GPSr was. I figured it was safe from plunder there, and I could get it later that night. When I got home, a fellow geocacher had left a message on the answering machine that he had found the GPSr.

 

I learned three things out of all of this. First, I should never own any expensive handheld GPSr's, because I cannot be trusted to not lose them. Second, electronics depreciates really fast, so break that early adopter addiction and you can buy 4 times as much stuff. Third, always put your phone number in and on your GPSr.

 

-Rick

Edited March 14, 2004 by rickrich

[+GPSKitty]

and my cat in its carrier....remembered just after I backed out of the driveway (another whew!).

Your CAT!!!???

 

All of these stories has made me VERY grateful that I have never been in the habit of putting things on the roof in the first place.

I didn't know that it was possible to enter your personal information into a GPSr. Must be the newer models? Mine is a now-discontinued Garmin eMap. I have a label maker though, so I will make sure to put the contact info on the outside. Never would have thought of that.

 

You've all made me feel better though. At least there are others out there who are as absent minded (or more-so) than me.

 

GPSKitty

[+eddthejailer]

well lets start way back when......my father and i were fishing on the banks of the ohio river in covington ky.our favorite night time catfishing place.he had an old tube type light blue d cell operated radio with no names on it.i have never seen another like it before or since.anyway the fishing was slow and after about 30 minutes we left due to no bites and others fishing right down from us and they were drinking as well.so we left and about 4 blocks away he realized we had no tunes playing.we went back to find radio and other fishers gone.

2nd story....my wife our 2 kids and the mother in law are going to the next state over for a wedding we are leaving early and there are 3 caches i seen on the way.so i argued forever with my wife since my motherinlaw hates any stopping during a long trip.i demanded i wasnt going on or driving this trip unless my daughter and i were allowed these 3 stops.a wigwam village,cave city,and a rest area cache.finally i won got the trip started got to the right area of the highway reached for my bag of goodies to trade and oh no......the gps is still on my computer desk with the battereis in the charger!!!!!to make it worse...mother-in-law laughed at me and my daughter cried.....but we did find them on our next trip down a few months later so no worries..and yes mother in law had to wait that time too...o well thats the price you pay when riding with a geocacher.

3rd story....my team and i were looking for a local cache shortly after we bought our gps once we found the cache we started back to the car.the walk in was very thorny so the others said we are going thru this personal property soybean field straight to the road and walk the road back to the car.i said not me i will walk thru the knee deep water in the creek that followed the path.so as i take a quiet stroll thru the creek looking at the fish swim by there running thru the field tripping and fallking over the bean vines.we all get to the car and start driving...they tell me of running thru this field almost hopping like a deer to aviod the vines and get out quickly then they say he was running along and all of a sudden he was gone....he had fallen into a sink hole and lost my gps in the field somewhere but the beans were to thick to find it and he was worried he was going to get cought on private property so he left it.he let me know he was kidding about losing the gps tho after my explosion...lol

[+briansnat]

to make it worse...mother-in-law laughed at me

 

One of the reasons that homicide isn't always a crime.

[+El Diablo]

The wife...did I leave her on the 2nd, or the 3rd cache of the day?

 

I'm not sure..but I'll bet she'll tell me when she gets home.

 

El Diablo

[+robert]

I left my Legend on the roof of my car on Saturday. Good thing the back is rubberized, it didn't slide off as I drove through the State Park. Realized it was missing and quickly stopped, ran to the back, and picked it off.

 

WHEW!

[bug and snake]

If I hadn't lost the danged GPS I would know where to find it!

[+wildearth2001]

If I hadn't lost the danged GPS I would know where to find it!

thats why you should buy a garmin rino. You tape somthing that makes a lot of noice to the unit you carry so it always keeps the VOX on and always transmitting. Then leave the other unit somewhere safe. If you loose the primary all you have to do it get within 2 miles and you can go right to it

[MOCKBA]

Lost my yellow etrex twice, found it only once unfortunately, don't keep it in the shirt pocket anymore. It ain't all that expensive to replace, luckily.

I also lost my digital camera while placing a multi-cache about where this cloud sits:

. Found it after descending a few hundred feet, but it wasn't any good anymore. Switched back to 35 mm since.

[+TeamJiffy]

When considering placing a cache, we always use both of our GPS receivers to try to get the best coordinates. One time, we tried placing a cache in a regional park at night. (Who knows why? We were just in the mood to place the cache, I guess...) We decided against the park, and when we got home, we were so tired that we didn't bother emptying out the car. The next morning - we saw that our GPS V was gone! We retraced our steps, and tried the gas station where we filled up on the way home, no luck, and then (reluctantly) tried going back to the over-grown park we had visited the night before. Reluctantly, I say, because the thought of finding it was akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

 

But, fortune smiled on us. Since we tried hiding the cache at night, the over-grown grass was wet with dew during our attempt. That meant that the grass was matted down by our foot-steps. As we arrived back at the location early in the morning, the grass was still wet and matted down. About 15-20 minutes after starting our search, we found our GPS V, sitting in the grass, obviously having fallen out of my jacket pocket. The batteries were still working! My wife said that it must have been thinking, "I know where I've been all this time - where have you been!?!" She anthropomorphizes everything.

 

-Jif

[+Ox]

I have the ultimate lost and found story. My family and I go scalloping every year in July. O one such occasion after my 14th B-Day I happened to set my eye glasses on the stern of the boat before going into the water. Well, I forgot about them and we left to go to another spot. When we got to the next spot I noticed they were missing and sheepishly admitted this to my Mother who scolded me for being irresponsible. Well, after moving around the bay, place to place looking for scallops, I happened upon a pair of glasses in a patch of sea grass. You guessed it, my misplaced eye glasses.

 

EDIT: WARNING OFF-TOPIC POST

Edited March 15, 2004 by Ox

[+Runfrog]

 

Okay this ain't about a GPS unit. Its about a light meter.. a $450 dollar light meter. A few years ago,I was out photographing early one morning. It was a nice, cold February day. I ventured out to the middle of this creek, took me three trips to get camera, tripod, filmholders and myself and said light meter to the spot. Hey the rocks were ice covered and sliiiiiiiiiipppery. Got the shot, started to pack it all up and was missing the light meter. Seems I had stuck it in my coat pocket and on one of the trips to and fro it jumped to its death. The long and short of it.... Put your GPS on a lanyard, around your neck. Light meters too.

[+glh]

Check this one out. I can vouch for it, since I was there! Ode to my GPS

glh

[Pooh and friends]

Heck, I lose my way long before I have a chance to lose my GPSR. But at the cache, its the first thing I check for before I leave, the next is my Pooh stamp'n kit. Now where did I leave that beer?